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Started Poker Face (Peacock) starring Natasha Lyonne: Love her.

issues

Yeah, but...that voice...with that clean guitar tone... Kinda reminds me of Les Paul and Mary Ford without the overdubbing.

Are you a paid influencer? Always have to check first. 🙂 Finished the uhhhh, finish for the tiny step stool. Holds my weight with no noises, so the little kids should be fine.

I traded my 116170LN for a Santos Dumont in rose gold plus a good bit of cash. Rolex prices high/precious metal watches low. It’s not the fanciest watch in the world, but the gold Santos Dumont has been a grail for me. It just took two years of never wearing the GMT Master 2 to get me to do something about it, I guess.

If it makes you smile it's a good thing, Jacob. HS

The Seville Concert [Expanded Edition] John Williams 1994 https://album.link/i/264719171 Example: One of the great recordings. I have had this since it came out, and I always wanted more, and now there is. I don't know when they expanded it, but I am glad they did. Just top notch performance and engineering in one.

^ Reality reflects film.

I hope payed influencers die off like crypto. Waiting on my Red cameras to start my channel. Stool looks good though.

TL; DR: I’ve wanted to build a Blue Hawaii ever since I read about it on head-wize. I finally got around building a mini BH-BJT packed into a small enclosure like a can of sardines. Many small tweaks were done in attempt to reach the measured performance of the original Blue Hawaii. The details of the journey are recorded here. Many thanks to Dr. Kevin Gilmore for designing this legendary project. Thanks to Kerry, JimL, Joamat and many others for making it such a fun journey. KGBH1.pdf

Haven't bought a new watch for a while. Enjoying this one.

^ Have not played the game but am enjoying the show, especially the intros to the first 2 episodes.

Some days I have fiddly, little stuff that takes time, with little visual reward. The homeowners wanted to save these built-ins. We had to remove them temporarily to wire the walls behind. Either in the removal or during it's life, the cabinet was missing some little trim pieces that you just can't find today. So I have to manufacture my own. The end result just looks like nothing was done, when in fact it was a lot of fiddling.

Winds of change and have blown on in, and I'll be at Canjam, looking forward to it!

Built a Megatron. Seems to be the perfect amp to build during the seemingly unending shortage of 10m90s. I used up my final few pieces of 10m90s and C2M1000170D for this simple build, and it gave me some mild anxiety and regret for not hoarding up those sands. However, the build experience and result are worth it. Build process and after thoughts I started off with a pair of generic chassis from Taobao. 32cm wide, 8cm tall, 35cm deep. Silver and black anodised aluminium. They weren't available in other finishes but this looks clean enough to me. They do have some minor scratches and dents if you look hard enough though. The casework was done by a laser etching service provider I found on Taobao. The end result was a clean and modern appearance. Inside the PSU are a pair of +/-450V GRHV, +/- 15V GRLV, delay board and a 270VA toroidal transformer. The idea was to create a PSU that can be used by both the Megatron and the Grounded Grid amp units. These components fit the chassis nicely with little room for a third GRHV board for the 300v rail for Megatron. Outputs are split into AC and DC outputs. Transformer specs: The heatsinks for the amp unit were probably redundant since most of the heat comes off from the top. The amp board could probably fit into a smaller and lighter chassis, but I chose the same chassis as the PSU just so that they can stack. The amp build was straight forward and relatively easy compared to a Carbon build or any of the KG dynamic amp builds, due to the low component count. I did not use any boutique components in this build. The coupling caps are Wima, and the voltage rail decoupling caps are Siemens. Volume pot is an EIZZ-style stepped attenuator, internal signal wirings are pure copper. Special care was taken when routing the heater filament wires to avoid hum. Amp testing and adjustment was simple. Just ensure the all the rails are as spec'ed and that's about it. The voltage offset settles automatically after power on. No need to fiddle with any potentiometer when the amp is powered on, so it is much safer to test than the Carbon or the T2 family. Sound I used the Megatron with ES-1A, and here is my impression of the Megatron after comparing it with GG (on the same PSU), Carbon (450V GRHV 15V GRLV) and Mini T2 (triple GRHV). Currently I am using the Megatron with a quad of Mullard XF2 and PSVane EL34PH. The front end tubes are all Valvos. The sound of the Megatron is warm, slightly thick in the mids, and non fatiguing and airy in the treble. It sounds very natural and the imaging is holographic with good recordings. While it is very detailed, it does not ruin joy if the recordings are of poorer quality. Older or poorly mixed recordings have a smooth timbre and organic vibe when heard from the Megatron. While the Megatron's treble is not as extended as the Carbon's, it complements the overall signature to create a very complete soundstage and convincing sense of separation and space. What makes the Megatron standout from crowd lies in its low end - it is an amp for bassheads. It has by far the most THICC bass compared to my other amps, even more than the Carbon. The bass extends as deep as the Carbon, but the Megatron has a nice lift in the mid bass that makes my ES 1a slam extra hard. Listening to EDMs and fast pop tracks on E-Stats is finally satisfying, and I can finally stash away my planars. Carbon is like an antithesis to the Megatron. Carbon is like a clean cutting razor with little tolerance for inaccuracies where as Megatron adds a lot of joy and flavour into the listening experience. Carbon also sounds a little linear. Although the stage is wide, it is not as deep as the Megatron's. GG sounds more organic than Carbon in general. The GG's signature is quite dependent on the tubes. With the XF2s, GG is warm and clean, but doesn't deviate far from the Carbon sound. The bass isn't as tight and fast, and treble could sound stiff and slightly shrill with the wrong tubes - such as the re-issue Mullard EL34. Mini T2 sounds slightly leaner and cleaner than the Megatron, and has a much smaller bass. It is as enjoyable a listening experience for me, but the Mini T2 was much harder to build - by sheer component count. Tube placement and choices Placing the EL34s in this manner shown below allows one to use two matched quads of EL34 if matched octets are unavailable. Initially I used cheap Linlai tubes for the front end and had issues with sound imbalance and hum - turned out that the tubes were the culprits. Switched to some cheap NOS and the issues were gone. So my advice would be to use well built tubes from reputable makers. The 12AU7s affect the sound significantly. The option to roll tubes makes Megatron extra fun to use. More photos of the internals and the back of the amp coming up soon, when I am more free. I would say that the Megatron is my favourite amp - until I build the T2.

RIP to Lloyd Morrisett, co=creator of Sesame Street https://toughpigs.com/rip-lloyd-morrisett/ And RIP to Lance Kerwin, child/adult actor. He was also selling timeshares in Hawaii at one point, my wife and I met him on our honeymoon. Very nice guy....only 62..... https://variety.com/2023/tv/obituaries-people-news/lance-kerwin-james-at-15-1235502420/